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Revenue growth FY 2020 to 2022: 198%
2022 revenue: $88.2 million
Fourpeat: Peterman Brothers, a plumbing, electrical and heating company, is a Fast 25 company for a fourth consecutive year. In the first quarter of 2023, revenue was up 70% compared with last year, President Chad Peterman said. “We don’t know what the rest of the year will hold, but we’re building. And we have the resources to take care of our customers.”
More graduates: Last year, Peterman Brothers hired 300 people and doubled its workforce, thanks in large part to its Top Tech Academy, which trains potential employees—many of whom are switching from other careers, Peterman said. The academy hopes to graduate more than 200 technicians this year.
Finding people: The Top Tech Academy only accepts 1% of the applicants it gets, and Chad (the one in the red shirt on the company’s trucks and in ads) said he never expected to spend so much of his time recruiting. Still, he is a proponent of the trades training their own people to keep up with demand. “We’ve just got to build out the training resources so they can become technicians because there’s demand out there.”
Pushing forward: In 2024, Peterman Brothers will continue to expand in central Indiana, Chad said. The company is opening a Terre Haute branch, and it’s starting to push into northern Indiana. “I still think there’s a lot of growth here in Indianapolis. I don’t know if we’ve scratched the surface,” he said. “It’s such a fragmented industry, and all of the data tells me that there’s so much more market share that we could have as long as we keep building technicians.”
Dad approves: Chad and his brother Tyler took over the day-to-day operations from their dad, Pete Peterman, in 2015. He semiretired in 2021 and is now fully retired, but he continues to watch the company expand and change. “The biggest change to me is the growth and how the boys have set goals and reached them,” he said in an email. “I will never forget when they told me what they were going to do back in our old office. I never had a doubt they would get there. I couldn’t be prouder of the two of them!!!”•
Check out more of IBJ’s ranking of Indy’s fastest-growing companies.
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